Gender Development

In this time of self and imposed quarantine and isolation, TBIPS’ classes continue on in their communion and discussion. This morning the Gender course participants concentrated on Benjamin’s (1995) trajectory of gender development. Remembering that gender is fluid, not fixed, and that the socially constructed binary (masculine/feminine) creates a power differential within this hierarchy, health, then, is the ability to hold in tension difference/sameness and to stand in the space of the multiplicity of genders and selves. How might one develop such a capacity?

Benjamin explicates four phases of gender development: 1) nominal gender-identification formation;2) early differentiation of identifications in the context of separation—individuation; 3) the preoedipal overinclusive phase;  4) the oedipal phase. 

Early on, children may have nominal awareness of gender differentiation or [?] nominal identification. With developing awareness, the child becomes “overinclusive,” wanting to possess both (perhaps  partly out of envy) and begins to have identifications with both. In the preoedipal rapprochement phase boys and girls identify with father, his otherness, subjectivity with its agency and desire. [We are here not discussing the otherness the mother brings in adding to the dyad her thinking as a third.]  This otherness of the father now becomes part of the child’s self identity (made up of multiple identifications) and is utilized to aid seeing self as different from mother. Benjamin (1991) states the importance for the girl of this identificatory love, different from object love, for the father, with identificatory love as a precursor to object love. Rejection by the father of identificatory love, or its disallowal by the mother, impedes the boy's identification with the father. For the girl, these impediments to identificatory love may lead to diminished agency and desire. The child, beginning to ascertain the meaning attributed to gender difference, begins to fall to one side of the gender binary. In the early oedipal phase, phallic phase, the binary split seems reified and the other is repudiated. Repudiation heralds loss, a giving up (denial, dissociation, split) of parts of the self. In healthy development, the late oedipal phase can allow for an increased capacity to hold the tension between differences and likeness, and to regain them, the capacity being further consolidated in adolescence.

Stamatina Kaidantzi asks: If identifying with the rapprochement father opens the space for otherness for both the boy and girl, is it then easier for the girl to maintain this otherness for she is also like the mother? The girl is both other than the mother and similar to the mother. The boy is other than the mother but is also like the one who confers the otherness, while the girl gets otherness from someone not like her. The boy does not have a sharply demarcated otherness because he is also similar to the other. This may explain why masculinity is more precarious. Euripides Gavras notes how the (positive) oedipal boy attacks the father to gain the opposite sex love object. Perhaps the boy also attacks the father in service of bulwarking the boy’s otherness. 

Benjamin, J. (1995). Sameness and Difference: Toward an “Overinclusive” Model of Gender Development. Psychoanal. Inq., 15(1):125-142.

Benjamin, J. (1991). Father and Daughter: Identification with Difference — A Contribution to Gender Heterodoxy. Psychoanal. Dial., 1(3):277-299.

Trauma and Psychosis: Gorney's take on Davoine/Gaudilliere on Lacan

On Saturday, March 7, 2020, the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society hosted James Gorney, PhD who introduced us to the delightful work of Francoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gaudilliere. In their book History Beyond Trauma we learn that trauma is a place, a crossroads much like the one where Oedipus meets Tiresias, which is opened up with the therapist as ‘therapon.’  Gorney tells us that a therapon in ancient Greece was one’s battle “buddy” who keeps the warrior spiritually and physically up for the task at hand, like the manager in the corner of the ring who attends to the boxer between rounds. [The dictionary defines therapon as “an attendant (minister) giving ‘willing service’... a faithful attendant who voluntarily serves another...in a tender, noble way.”  I think these aptly apply to our work.] 

In Part I ‘Lessons of Madness,’ Davoine and Gaudilliere emphasize the relationship between social trauma, intergenerational trauma, and the historical effect on the traumatized individual. Like Lacan, they see psychosis as the foreclosure of the Symbolic, existing in the realm of the Real, only able to be represented in the Imaginary’s delusions and hallucinations. What I found most intriguing was their approach to psychosis: Psychosis is the mode of investigation, claiming that trauma is at the root of ‘madness’ and lives in unrepresented states. Thus psychosis is a means of research, with its co-investigator the analyst. Madness, employed as the means of research, investigates the disavowed signifiers of trauma. Signifiers are relational and ensure entry into the Symbolic order. [According to Gorney, the “symbolon” in ancient Greece was a gesture, breaking a vessel between two allies, each fitting together a broken shard, to pledge their mutual hospitality.] The psychotic symptoms are the markers, pointing to the place of unspeakable trauma. “Trauma speaks to trauma and only to trauma.” The analyst must also be with the trauma within. [Gorney gave a lovely metaphor for projective identification: it is the hat of the patient hung on the hook of the analyst.] Davoine and Gaudilliere claim trauma must be “inscribed” to be remembered and brought into a social link. [I wonder if the Boston Change Process Study Group would agree that symbolization of any kind is always necessary, given that a change in implicit relational knowing can occur procedurally without inscription.]

Because trauma is a “war zone,” in Part II ‘Lessons from the Front,’ we learn of four principles drawn from work of  WWI American psychiatrist Thomas Salmon: proximity, immediacy, expectancy, and simplicity. Proximity opens up the space for safety and trust amidst the chaotic trauma. Gorney: ‘I am here with you. We are in this together.’ It is not just the physical proximity, but the willingness to take up the battle together, side by side, and to take care of one another, the therapon. It is also the survival [Winnicott] of the analyst. Medicating symptoms, without investigation and research, is the opposite of proximity. Immediacy allows us to live in the temporal context of the patient’s urgency. Gorney: ‘I will meet you at the place of pain and anxiety.’ Gaudilliere saw madness as the potential for hope and reintegration, the place to begin. Davoine saw delusion as a way of knowledge. Expectancy “constructs a welcome to the return from hell.” Gorney: ‘I say “yes” to you.’ It is the interpersonal place with a trustworthy other of mutual respect, a “primal affirmation,” the validation that yes, something horrible happened. Simplicity refers to speaking directly without jargon. Gorney: ‘I will tell it to you like it is.’ The therapon communicates, always respectfully, without moralizing, without reassuring, without showing-off cleverness, speaking honestly and slicing through the Imaginary.

[Gorney’s rich clinical examples (not related here for confidentiality’s sake) were beautiful, poetic, and moving and I recommend you read his papers.]

Davoine, F. and Gaudilliere, J-M. (2004) History Beyond Trauma. New York: Other Press.